Charlie Rose with Martin Amis; Norman Mailer

First, a conversation with author Martin Amis about his new book "House of Meetings" and his experiences as a writer. The book takes the form of a book-length letter from a former inmate at a Russian gulag to his American "step-daughter" in which recounts his experiences. Then, a discussion with two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Norman Mailer about his new book "Castle in the Forest", the first in ten years. The story offers a fictional account of Adolf Hitler's childhood as told from the perspective of a devil tasked by Satan with cultivating Hitler's evil.

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The last Mailer interview with Charlie Rose

Charlie Rose has interviewed Norman Mailer several times over the past fifteen years. This interview proves to be the last. It concludes with what Mailer had intended to be, perhaps intended to be, an off- the- camera remark in which he tells Charlie Rose that " he is better than ever." Flattery or not, it is quite moving and human, and in fact true in relation to this interview.
Mailer at eighty- four appears clearer and surer in mind than ever. All white-maned and yet firm and strong in voice. He speaks with a reasonableness and sanity that he so often lacked through the long wild years. Charlie Rose even asks him about the future, and Mailer it turns out in an extremely wise way says that he 'could roll off the table at any moment'.
Mailer is more wise, and somehow more humble about himself than he has ever been. He says that looking back on his life, he like everyone else has done some of what he wanted , and not be able to do some of what he wanted. He says that he now has a kind of peace that he never had before, and seems happy about his family life.
However when he comes to talk about the book in question which will turn out to be his last novel , it seems to me , he is not that wise. He says the subject of Hitler has fascinated him since he was nine and his mother told him in 1932 even before Hitler's coming to power that he would destroy the Jews.
Mailer says the fascination with Hitler all his life at last chrystallized and in the past ten years he has worked on this project. He tells about finding a narrative voice through using a minor character, an assistant of the devil as principal narrator. Here Mailer makes an interesting point about the importance of the narrative voice as being not completely identical with the author's own voice. I had thought that some of Mailer's best work, the great journalism of 'Armies of the Night' came precisely from using his own voice. In any case Mailer goes on to quite clearly and logically explain what goes in the novel.
It does not seem to occur to him that there might be something mistaken in the whole choice of subject. And that there might be something morally askew in his focusing precisely on the childhood of a mass- murderer and asking the reader to give sympathy and attention to this. In my own view Mailer made a colossal misjudgment in writing this book, similar to the one he made in writing 'Ancient Evenings'.
I don't see why anyone should take interest in a fictional story about the family background of a mass-murderer when there are a whole host of biographies and historical speculations available.
Mailer was a writer of enormous talent. He is tremendously likeable in this last interview. What a pity it is that he did not have even one person who could tell him that he was making a major mistake here.
He was a great American writer, and his last years and work would have been better devoted to the American characters and society he really knew well.
November 14, 2007

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